Funny, that. (OT)

[Barry Arrowsmith]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "Kat Macfarlane" <katmac at ...> wrote:
>
> Your place sounds just like my place. Let's put my books up against your books and see 
if we can get some spontaneous regeneration. Although I may have it already. I swear I 
keep finding things in my bookshelves that I have no recollection of having bought.
> 
> I'm with you on modern humorists. I adore P.G. Wodehouse, also E.F. Benson (the Mapp 
and Lucia books), have a whole bookcase full of him. You already know I'm a Thurber fan. I 
still crack up over My Life and Hard Times. Then there's Our Hearts Were Young and Gay, 
written back when "gay" didn't mean what it means now. And I'm embarking this weekend 
on E.M. Delafield's Provincial Lady, whom I seem somehow to have missed. And of course I 
should reread Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. I found those funny even when I was a 
kid in high school. To say nothing of Puddinhead Wilson.
> 
> There is hope. Connie Wilson writes some devastatingly funny stuff. Bellwether is fiction 
and is about science and still manages not to be science fiction; but everyone who has 
ever worked in the high tech industries has had a Flip in their lives. And if you haven't read 
To Say Nothing of the Dog, run, don't walk, to your nearest library or bookstore.
> 
> And I've learned not to keep Steven Pyle's The Incomplete Book of Failures on the back 
of my toilet. Too many social gatherings have been brought to an ominous silence by 
howls of laughter issuing from behind the closed door. And I can't help feeling that "I have 
a fun bathroom" is a rather feeble excuse.
>


Not sure I approve of books breeding, who knows what monstrosities might appear.
To allow 'Call of the Wild' to snuggle up to 'Fanny by Gaslight' and produce 'Call of the 
Fanny' would be irresponsible to say the least.

I don't find books so much as have them disappear. I got a new dog in the summer and
she has a taste for literature - she eats books. Three gone in the past couple of months. 
It's not as if she's a pup either, she's 5 years old.

As for the oldies, let's not forget Saki (H. H. Munro) or even ole Kippers on occasion.
Twain isn't nearly so popular over here as in the States, naturally enough, and I'd bet that  
more Brits have read, say, Robert Benchley, Dorothy Parker and H. L. Mencken than 
Thurber. I think we prefer a dash of acid in our humour, something that gives Carl Hiaason 
a fan base over here. (A darker Brit equivalent would be Christopher Brookmyer - 'Quite 
Ugly One Morning', 'One Fine Day In The Middle Of The Night', 'Country of the Blind' -  
earned the label of 'tartan noir'.) Yeah, Connie Willis can be fun, although 'Doomsday Book' 
is a bit of a downer, even though I think it's her best so far.

Pyle's stuff, while undoubtedly funny, starts to edge over into a slightly different category 
IMO. It's the realm of the accomplished wordsmith, raconteur or practical joker (The Henry 
Root Letters, for example, a literary fore-runner of Borat in some respects.) Two of the 
funniest laugh-out-loud books I've read were David Niven's autobiographical tomes, and 
while there's probably some exaggeration, it's not really true fiction. And if close-to-real 
life is funnier than most comedic fiction, then good humorous books are obviously bloody 
difficult to write.

Kneasy